Holy Cobras

Holy Cobras sound like they belong in the best semi-legal parties in condemned basements or sketchy Montreal lofts. Their frontman began by swaggering around the stage, holding the microphone like he was jerking off, as his bandmates upped the distortion on everything. He introduced the first song, about "being a poohead," which was about the only intelligible lyric of the set. Holy Cobras scuffed up their psychedelic punk with intense distortion, reverb and delays, the vocalist screaming into two attached microphones. Their extended jams tended to blend into each other by the end of their set (they could have played the same set the last time they passed through Halifax at May's Obey Convention), but they broke things up by finishing off with phaser-heavy covers of the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and Joy Division's "Digital."